It's a winter win for Alderson and Mets

DALLAS

Well, that's one way to divert Mets fans' attention away from Wednesday's news conference introducing Jose Reyes as a Miami Marlin.

In the span of just a few hours Tuesday night, the Mets signed a closer in Frank Francisco and a setup man in Jon Rauch and traded centerfielder Angel Pagan to San Francisco (no relation to Frank) for centerfielder Andres Torres and reliever Ramon Ramirez.

Whew!

That's more action than Brian Cashman, Sandy Alderson's Yankees counterpart, has seen in how long? A year?

Action in itself means nothing, of course, and the take-away from this trio of moves is this: The Mets' bullpen improved significantly, but they sure did hate Pagan, eh?

Pagan is the best player in the Giants trade -- hence the Mets getting two players back, including the useful Ramirez -- and for a team supposedly trying to contend in 2012, giving away such a talent makes sense only if the team had soured on the player. That's precisely what occurred with the Mets and Pagan, 30, who provided so much value in 2009 and 2010, only to slip backward last season under Terry Collins.

Part of it, friends of Pagan will tell you, happened because he was more hurt than he let on when he went on the disabled list with an oblique injury. But no matter who was to blame, you couldn't deny that Pagan regressed both offensively and defensively.

And yet he still provided considerably more help on the offensive side than did Torres, 33, whose bad 2011 made his terrific 2010 look like even more of an outlier in an overall underwhelming big-league career.

It's very fair to wonder whether Torres, while a defensive upgrade over Pagan, will hit enough to stay in the Mets' everyday lineup. We're talking about a guy with a career on-base percentage of .318 and a .403 slugging percentage. It's now incumbent upon the Mets to find a superior Plan B in centerfield in the form of a bench player, while also hoping that prospect Kirk Nieuwenhuis continues to develop.

In signing Francisco and Rauch, the Blue Jays' top relievers from their 2011 campaign, the Mets followed through on their promise to bring aboard two experienced guys. Francisco, given a two-year deal, will start as the closer, with Rauch (a one-year deal) pitching the eighth and holdovers Bobby Parnell and Manny Acosta helping with setup duties.

Pedro Beato, a Rule 5 pick last year who had to spend the entire season in the majors, can now go to the minor leagues for more seasoning, if the Mets so desire.

This is all good. We saw how many games the Mets lost in 2011, particularly after they traded Francisco Rodriguez to Milwaukee in July, because they failed to hold late-inning leads. The arrivals of Francisco, Rauch and Ramirez should make the Mets better in that department, and that should help the overall morale of the club. Late blown leads will threaten any team's mental health.

In giving up Pagan, though, you wonder whether the Mets will have fewer late leads to protect.

Count the whole package as a winter win, for now, especially at a juncture when morose Mets fans wondered if anything would be done in this post-Reyes era. Yes, the Mets are going to try, a little, to win some ballgames in 2012.

Call the Pagan trade a bold move, but also a risky one. The budget-challenged Mets need to take risks. Yet right now, giving up Pagan feels like a risk that could easily backfire.